Sleeping Habits
by jbirdpuff
Summary: "It was long after she fell asleep when he could feel her calm breath ghosting across his collarbones that he realized that he might not love her exactly how he'd always thought." HarryxHermione one-shot about their relationship after the war.


**AN: I have been wanting to write a Harmony fic forever, and this is an idea I have been toying with. **

**I tried more of a third person omniscient point of view rather than limited, so you get to see inside the heads of all characters. **

**DISCLAIMER: Don't own anything**

* * *

**Sleeping Habits**

The thing about the war ending was that it didn't actually end. At least not for Hermione.

There were still echoes of it resonating through her brain. Shadows of battles and Death Eaters following her just outside of her peripheral everywhere she went. She couldn't see them, but she _knew _they were there. She felt as though she woke up from every nightmare just to have her greatest fears follow her into the light of day. If anyone that surrounded her saw her on those first few days following Voldemort's death, they didn't comment on the way her eyes darted to the corners of her eyes every few seconds.

It's not like anyone was paying any attention to her anyway. They were all so wrapped up in their own grief that they didn't even notice when she disappeared from the Burrow the night after Fred's funeral. Well, she hadn't thought anyone had noticed.

She didn't even know where she was going as she walked out into the backyard with nothing but her wand and the clothes on her back, and she was still making the decision when soft footsteps behind her resounded through the crisp air surrounding her.

Before she knew it, or could stop herself, she was pointing her wand between the eyes of her closest friend with a nasty curse on the tip of her tongue. She counted his calm blinks as she slowly released the adrenaline coursing through her entire body.

"Harry?" The tension was gone, but she kept her wand steadily pointing at him. "What song did we dance to?"

Harry didn't even look surprised at her paranoid question. He simply smiled at her with something akin to nostalgia gleaming from behind his glasses. She didn't even have to clarify what dance, or where. If it was Harry Potter, she wouldn't have to.

"O Children."

Slowly her wand lowered, and he watched as the fear and strength he had just seen was replaced by a crippling sort of emotion. All of it was there displayed in her expressive features. The kind of feelings left in the follow-up of the war were impossible to define. He watched as her entire body collapsed in on itself and within seconds he had her wrapped up in his arms. His large figure swallowed up her frail form nearly entirely, and Hermione mused that nothing would ever feel as safe as being held by Harry Potter.

She wasn't crying, but her body was wracked with fearful shivers and that same tension that she had been carrying around for the past year.

"Where were you going, Hermione?"

She pulled away and blinked up at him with an owlishly lost expression, and this to him was more disconcerting than her wand being held between his eyes.

"Where were you going?" He repeated quietly.

"I don't know." She backed away a couple steps and looked up at the wobbly looking place that her and Harry had been calling home for the past couple of weeks. But it wasn't home was it? That's why she needed to leave. The Weasley's following Fred's death had banded impossibly closer together in their grief, and though they'd never say it, Hermione and Harry were outsiders. She felt unjustified in her suffering, and she knew that that was no way to properly recover. She was suffocating, and all she wanted was a moment of peace.

"I have to leave," she finally managed.

Harry imagined life at the burrow without Hermione, and it was somehow even more depressing than it currently was. That thought alone made the decision for him.

"I'm coming with you," he said without room for argument.

She studied his expression and decided she really couldn't find a reason for him not to come. She had stayed by his side for seven years leading up to and during the war. Who was she to deny him when he wanted to return the favor afterwards? She nodded and latched onto his elbow. In a split second, she made a decision that really hadn't even been much of a decision at all and apparated them to her home on the corner of Heathgate and Meadway. She guesses a part of her knew all along where she would be going.

She apparated them near the church at the end of the street, and Harry silently followed behind her on the short walk down to her muggle home. It was a very quiet night, and they both must have looked suspicious with their darting eyes and brisk pace.

Harry's hand on the sleeve of her t-shirt was a comforting presence, but she still audibly sighed in relief when they made it up the stone steps to her house. Her body froze once she'd whispered an unlocking spell and dismantled the protective wards she'd placed on the property.

Her breathing started to increase with the obvious signs of an impending panic attack, and Harry, sensing this, stepped in front of her and silently opened the door.

Her fingers tangled in the back of his t-shirt as she allowed him to pull her into the house behind him.

"Lumos," he whispered.

It was exactly how she'd left it. She'd placed the idea in her parents mind to leave everything but necessities, and she was thankful for that now. The framed pictures of her parents and familiar furniture brought qualms of both happiness and deep sorrow. It was like she had placed a stasis charm on the entire house, and it was frozen in time. There was a half empty tea-cup on one of the side tables (her mum's favorite tea-cup), and some burnt toast still sitting propped inside the toaster. The newspaper from the day she had obliviated them was resting on the breakfast table, and one of her mother's books was bookmarked at the seat beside it. It was like they had just stepped outside for a moment to fetch the mail, and left everything in its place to return to. If it weren't for the dust, she would've truly believed someone had been living there.

As she floated around the house like a ghost, she heard Harry mucking about from somewhere upstairs and before she knew it, he was behind her in the hallway. Staring over her should at a picture of her mother crouching down next to empty air that used to be Hermione when she was four. Harry's breath was warm on the back of her neck, and though it sent goosebumps racing across her skin, it also brought her comfort.

"Can you return-"

"No."

"Have you tried-"

"Everything, Harry."

It was true. Hermione spoke to every mind healer at her disposal in the days following the Battle of Hogwarts, but they all said the same thing.

_Too risky. You wouldn't want your parents to end up in the Janus Thickey Ward because of you, would you?_

Hermione fingers reached out and brushed the dust off the glass of the frame, and she felt Harry's arms come around her from behind.

With his chin pressed into her shoulder and the frame of his glasses pushing into her cheek, he said fondly, "She has your hair."

She let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob, but there were still no tears. She knew eventually the dam would break, but for some reason that she couldn't comprehend, she hadn't cried a single time in the past week.

"They would've liked you, Harry."

She could hear the twisted sort of dark humor in his voice when he said, "I imagine my parents would've liked you too. Although I wouldn't really know."

Hermione spun in her arms then and just stared at her friend.

It hit her then how horribly alone they both were.

"Come on, Harry. You can have the guest bedroom."

* * *

Hermione lasted maybe two hours in her old bedroom before she couldn't take it any longer.

The whispers were louder here, the shadows deeper. Hermione found herself very nearly running through her home to the guest bedroom at the bottom of the stairs. She could feel her fears knipping at her ankles, and she very nearly fell down the stairs due to the large comforter she had wrapped around herself.

She only paused in her rush when she reached the edge of his bed and saw his peacefully sleeping form.

She would be crossing a line.

They had shared a bed the entire time they had been alone in the tent, but this was different.

At the Burrow, her and Ginny had made the decision to push their beds together as some frail kind of protection from their nightmares, but being alone in her old bedroom had left her frantic. She felt as though she was teetering on the edge of sanity.

She was pulled from her trance when Harry rolled over and blinked up at her with blurry eyes.

"Hermione?" He sat up and blindly reached for his glasses on the bedside table. Hermione was very nearly hyperventilating at that point, and once Harry had his glasses on, he could see that something was very wrong. Her hair was in complete disarray in an uncontrollable mound of curls on top of her head, and her skin was deathly pale.

"Can I stay with you, Harry?"

He had already been shifting over before she had even finished her question, and she collapsed next to him. They were both lying on their sides facing each other, their cheeks resting on the same pillow. Their noses were resting just inches away from each other and at the earnest and questioning look in his eyes, she finally let loose everything that had been building inside her since she had watched Voldemort's body blow away like dust in the wind.

"I keep seeing things, Harry. When my eyes are open _and_ closed, the war is _haunting _me. I see the wedding, Dolohov, the ministry, my parents," she took a deep breath before saying, "Malfoy Manor, and…" She trailed off and reached out, so that her hand was resting lightly over his beating heart. _Beating_. She let that rhythmic feeling wash over her and ignored the pained look in Harry's eyes. "And you, dead in Hagrid's arms," she whispered so that it was barely audible.

Hermione didn't think she would ever forget that feeling. The immediate devastating loss and heartbreak. She was nothing without Harry. _Nothing_. And part of her knew that thinking like that was unhealthy, but that's how she had felt in that moment. Like _nothing_.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said back to her tenderly.

Hermione had no idea that Harry felt quite the same way. He wouldn't have been able to beat Voldemort without her, and the way she had felt when she had seen his body was the same way he had felt when he had to listen to her never ending screams in that dungeon.

This revelation hit him like a ton of bricks as Hermione leaned into his body fully and pressed her ear to his chest right above his heart. He didn't know what Hermione was to him, but what he did know was that she was the only person he couldn't live without. Not _truly_ live.

Just the idea of a life where she wasn't there made him feel this absolutely mad amount of emptiness.

"I'm here," he promised. "Always."

She released the comforter that she had in a death grip and wrapped her arms around him. She could feel his ribs, and he was much thinner than a boy his age should be. Then again, so was she.

She supposed they were both just a little broken.

* * *

Every night after that, Hermione found her way into the guest bedroom to be with Harry. They had cut themselves off from the magical world completely. They shopped in muggle stores and left all letters unopened. Her floo was closed off from all visitors, but after a week of this, they sent a letter to Ron with the address.

It took him another week to show up, and when he did it was like a hurricane blew through the place.

"So you've been here the whole time? Hiding away together?"

"It's not like that, Ron," Hermione tried, but the disbelieving look from Ron and Harry's hand landing on the small of her back had her snapping her mouth shut because that was _exactly _what it was.

"I get it," Ron said with the most hateful and volatile look in his eyes that she had ever seen before. "It's because I left right? In the forest?"

Ron was practically spitting the words at them, and Hermione felt herself shrinking even further into the warmth of Harry's palm. Before the war, she would've reacted with equal anger, but she was more of just an echo of who she used to be. Just another shadow stuck in the righteous and strong body of her former self.

"It's always been you two, huh? All this time?"

Harry's response both shocked her and caused an odd skipping in her heartbeat that she had never felt around him before.

"Yeah, Ron. It always has."

Hermione watched with wide eyes as Ron's rage finally hit the surface, and he kicked one of her parents' side tables. She launched forward as her mother's favorite mug that she hadn't had the heart to move tumbled off the tilting table and hit the ground with the sound of shattering porcelain.

The sound of Harry and Ron's fight was drowned out when she felt the tears she had been holding in for weeks finally surfaced. It was a tsunami of emotions, and she could do nothing to hold them back. She couldn't think straight as she reached her fingers into the tiny shattered bits and started trying to put them together like puzzle pieces. There was no part of her that remembered that she was a witch, and she could just magic it back together.

Her hands were bleeding, and there were tiny shards stuck in her fingertips. She was letting out great choked sobs by the time Ron had left with a crack of apparition, and Harry had come back.

He wasted no time in dropping beside her and pulling out his wand. The spell to fix it pulled the shards from her fingers, and before she knew it, she had a whole but bloody cup in between her palms. Her body collapsed forward in on it so that the cup was clutched to her chest, and her body was as small as it could be.

Harry watched on helplessly before pulling her into his own chest, his body completely wrapping around her collapsed form.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," she choked out against his heart, and he started pressing desperate kisses against the top of her head. He knew she didn't mean just in that moment. She meant _more _than that. She meant how she hadn't laughed in months, couldn't finish whole meals, woke up screaming, was scared of the shadows even on the brightest day, and how she seemed to be haunting the halls of her own home like a ghost. Harry _knew _what she meant, and if something was wrong with her then there was clearly something wrong with him as well.

"Nothing's wrong with you, Hermione. You hear me? _Nothing._"

He knew this was bound to happen sometime, but he couldn't have imagined how much this would have hurt _him_. He felt every sob that wracked her body like it was one of his own, and the cup between their torsos was pushing painfully into his ribs. But that wasn't the worst part.

The worst part was that he knew exactly how she felt. It was like he was an empath, and her emotions were blurring together with his. Silent tears rolled down his cheeks, and he arched his back oddly to press his forehead against hers.

"I feel it too, Hermione," he whispered. Every time her body shook it knocked their noses together painfully, but he either didn't notice or didn't care. Their tears mingled together as they dripped down to the delicate painted china, and he didn't know how long they sat there together.

It must have been an hour later that he finally stood and pulled her frail body up with him. She was curled in his arms like a child as he carried her to the kitchen and carefully placed her on the counter in front of him. He washed and cared for her wounds the muggle way, and even though it took longer and would leave small white scars, he imagined this was something he needed to do for her. Something he had noticed since they had come to stay in her family home was that she did just about everything the muggle way.

That night they crossed another line when Hermione crawled into his bed without the added barrier of her own comforter, but Harry couldn't express his relief at the feeling of her skin against his. It was long after she fell asleep when he could feel her calm breath ghosting across his collarbones that he realized that he might not love her exactly how he'd always thought.

* * *

Things were different after that day. They developed a kind of naturalness around each other that usually was born of decades of marriage. They didn't need to speak to have entire conversations, and they knew everything about the other.

It wasn't until they went to visit Andromeda and Teddy that Hermione had the same realization about Harry.

He was speaking with Andromeda as Hermione held the baby in her arms. It was a kind of therapy that she never would've considered before, and for the first time in months she found herself reacquainted with the sound of her own laughter.

"Andromeda, I want to adopt him."

At those words Hermione tore her eyes away from the unbelievably blue shade of Teddy's hair and watched Harry stare at the tired woman with that completely earnest expression that she loved so much.

"Harry, I don't want you to feel obligated. That's no way for Teddy to grow up. He's not a burden," the aging woman said sternly.

"No. He's _not_. He wouldn't be. I love him. I _would _love him. He would grow up in a house with so much love that he won't know what to do with it." Harry's blazing green eyes met Hermione's watering ones, and she gave him a soft and encouraging smile. It was with his eyes on Hermione that he said, "We would be a family."

Hermione emitted a soft gasp as the truth of her feelings made itself apparent to her. She loved him. Like _really _loved him.

She stepped forward, so that she was standing next to him and tore her eyes from Harry's to give Andromeda a strong and honest look. "_We _would love him."

The doubt that had been lingering in Andromeda's eyes seemed to filter out at Hermione's assurance, and it gave way to a loving but grievous expression. "I think that's why they named you god-father, Harry. They knew that you would love him like your own in this instance."

* * *

It was decided that Teddy would be coming to them at the house on the corner of Heathgate and Meadway in just a fortnight. Hermione couldn't bring herself to feel anything but positive emotions about this decision and even insisted they go shopping for baby things as soon as they left Andromeda's cottage.

They were in a muggle baby store looking at clothes just an hour later. Hermione held up an adorable blue onesie covered in rubber duckies for Harry to see.

"Oh, Harry! We have to get him this one!"

When she tore her eyes from the fabric it was to see Harry looking at her from across the rack with tears in his eyes. He was grinning at her as he reached up and wiped the tears from under his glasses.

"What is-"

Before she could finish, he had reached over and pulled her body into the rack. It was painful and awkward, but he decided that he didn't really care. In a moment of desperation, he kissed her with everything he had. Everything he felt was put into the kiss, and after just a few moments he had gentled it and the kiss became unbelievably tender. When they separated, she was looking up at him with wide eyes and the onesie still held awkwardly in the air beside her.

"Do you want it, Hermione?" He asked with that same burning look in his eyes. Her breathing was erratic, and her face bright red.

"Want what exactly?" She asked with a bit of a dazed expression.

"To be a family. Do you want it?"

She shook herself and gave him a nervous but sure smile. "I want it, Harry." If the feelings fluttering in her abdomen were any indication, she should've been pining after Harry all these years. "More than anything."

Harry gave a joyous laugh, and she found herself laughing along with him.

"Now, I really think we ought to get him this onesie because it is unbelievably adorable."

* * *

Hermione found herself having more good moments than bad moments as the days wore on. Her and Harry fit together so perfectly that they both found themselves wondering why they had wasted so much time.

It wasn't until they made the decision to move into her parents old bedroom so that they could make the guest room the nursery, that she had a truly _awful _day. The memories were everywhere, and she ended up having to get rid of all of it and buy new furniture completely because of how heartbreaking her thoughts became at the sight of a place so heavily influenced by her parents.

Putting the nursery together was her favorite part. They did everything the muggle way (of course), and it was when they were painting the walls an earthy green color that they had another visitor. Harry was covered in paint and still smiling when he opened the door to a nervous looking Ginny and Molly.

He was immediately crushed in a hug, and the roller in his hand dropped to the ground with a loud thud.

"Harry?" Hermione's voice immediately rang through the home following the noise, and Molly pulled away.

"Is that Hermione?" She asked nervously, and it was only when the woman called out, "Hermione, dear?" That Harry turned to Ginny.

The grief of losing her brother was clear on her face, but she looked sharp and strong as ever. And just as she always did, she got straight to the point.

"It's Hermione isn't it?" He felt an uncomfortably guilty feeling settle in the pit of his stomach as he looked into her usually warm brown eyes to try and decipher her intent. That was the thing about Ginny though. She was always much better at hiding her feelings than anyone else in her family. She kept her vulnerabilities masked very carefully, and she deserved the truth without any excuses.

"Yes," he said simply.

She wasted no time in nodding in acceptance like she had been expecting that exact answer. "I always imagined it would be. I just kind of hoped you would never figure it out."

It was a brutally honest and selfish statement, but he couldn't find it in himself to be angry with her. He couldn't even imagine the possibility of having the person you love figure out they were in love with someone else.

After a few moments where Harry tried to decide if he should apologize or not, Ginny gave him a pained smile. "Can I come in? Mum says you're adopting Teddy, and I want to see the nursery."

Harry smiled genuinely and stepped back to allow her interest. "Leave it to your mum to find out the news before we even get the chance to tell her."

Ginny smirked at him from over her shoulder as she followed the noises from inside. "Well, her and Andromeda are awfully close now, and of course, mum is awfully nosy."

"Oh, of course," he said with a relieved smile.

When they stepped into the nursery, Hermione was standing there in her paint covered muggle denims, and one of his old t-shirts with her arms spread wide as she explained her vision to Molly. Harry stood in the doorway and studied her as she smiled and laughed, completely oblivious to the line of green paint across her freckled nose, and he couldn't help the loving smile that spread across his face.

He couldn't help but ask himself if he would have realized it was Hermione if there had been a world without war. Would he have? He wasn't sure, but what he did _know _was that he, for the first time, found himself relishing in the positive things that came from the war because he now had Hermione.

* * *

**AN: I kind of wish I had saved this story for a multi-chapter fic, but I'm sure I will think of something else for a long Harmony fic. **

**Just to clarify, I absolutely love Ron's character, and I imagine in this storyline he eventually would come around, and be a big part of their lives. But what I don't understand is how they could ever go back to being as close as they were after he abandoned them in the forest. **

**Anyway, thanks for reading my first attempt at a harry/hermione story! Let me know what you thought!**


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